Los Angeles Riots

Though sparked by the Rodney King verdict, there were many other causes of the riots that erupted on the streets of Los Angeles on April 29, 1992. The Los Angeles riots in 1992 were devastating. The obvious issue portrayed through the media was black versus white. If you did not live in Los Angeles or California chances are you did not hear full coverage of the story, you heard a simple cut and dry portrayal of the events in South Central. If you heard one thing about the riots, it was that there was a man named Rodney King and he was a black male beaten with excessive force by four white Los Angeles police officers on Los Angeles concrete. The media portrayed the riots as black rage on the streets due to the

In Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” there are a lot of characters who have different thoughts of what happened and why it happened. The LA uprisings happened after the video of a black young man being severely beaten by four white policemen was released to the media for everyone to see. During the uprisings people were getting shot by stray bullets and businesses were being destroyed, especially Korean stores. It was said to be one of the worst riots in U.S. history.

Race riots are one of the major news items we hear about via the media when a social crisis occurs. The riots in Baltimore, however, were not so much about race, but more about economic and social class separations. The riots began as a peaceful protest amongst the citizens of Baltimore over the death of one of their own, Freddie Gray. Gray was a young, African-American, from a financially lower class area of Baltimore. Unfortunately, he died while in custody of the Baltimore Police. While this is a tragic loss, he was unlawfully detained by the police (Sarlin, 2015) during this ordeal. On the surface, the riots may appear as a cut-and-dry race provoked, once they are looked into further, that is not necessarily the case.

On April 29, 1992, the City of Los Angeles was surrounded in a riot in response to the "not guilty" verdicts in the trial of four white Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers accused of unlawfully beating Rodney King. Six days later, when the fires were finally extinguished and the smoke had cleared, "estimates of the material damage done vary between about $800 million and $1 billion, 54 people had been killed, more than 2000 injured, in excess of 800 structures were burned, and about 10,000 people were arrested."(Khalifah 89) The 1992 riots in the City of Los Angeles were arguably the most devastating civil disturbance in the history of the United States.

Rodney King, one of America’s most powerful civil rights activists for people abused by police, has taught the world a lesson in his plea: “People, I just want to say, can’t we all get along?” On March 3, 1991, after a high-speed chase, King was pulled out of his car, thrown on to the ground, and beaten up by the Los Angeles police, which George Holliday videotaped. The four L.A.P.D. officers involved were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and one officer was charged with using of excessive force. However, after a three-month trial, which was held in Simi Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles, a predominantly white jury acquitted the officers. This inflamed the citizens, which resulted in the violent 1992 Los Angeles riots.

This event became known as “The Los Angeles Riots”. According to Linda Ellis “Fifty-one people lost their lives in the five-day rebellion that injured 2,383; caused over 600 fires; led to the arrest of 15,000 people; and at least $785 million in property damage breaking all previous records for American civil unrest.”(Ellis 47). The flashpoint for the Los Angeles Riots occurred on the corner of Florence Avenue and Normandie Blvd when a white truck driver attempted to turn left onto Florence Avenue from northbound lane of Normandie Blvd. While the driver (Reginald Denny) was making the turn, he was stopped in the middle of the street by a group of protester’s who were upset that the Los Angeles Police Officers that had beaten Rodney King had been acquitted of all charges by a jury in the city of Simi Valley a predominately white upper class area. Far removed from the demographics of the people in South Central Los Angeles. As Reginald Denny waited for the protestor to move, he was violently pulled out of his truck and viciously beaten and thrown onto the ground by 2 known gang members. One of those gang members Damion “Football” Williams proceeded to throw

The Los Angeles Riots of 1992 caused an uproar in the United States due to all the violence, and “cost the state of California over a billion dollars in damage” (history.com). The Riots were caused by a video that was leaked to the public of a black man that was assaulted by LAPD officers. Chaos raged on the streets of Los Angeles for a total of three days until the President of the United States stepped in to bring some order back to the city.

The riots in Los Angeles had an absurd amount of injuries; this left everyone trembling in fear of what was next for the future. The tragic events that happened in this decade though were absolutely horrible, do not overpower the greatness and evolvement of the advances in every other aspect of life. Just like the shooting at Columbine, the riots in Los Angeles allowed the public to understand and learn more about how people should get

According to Gates, "Watts brought the economic nature of oppression to the nation's attention [and marked] the beginning of the end of the civil rights movement and the birth of a more subtle and nuanced and complex kind of analysis (Mozingo & Jennings, 2015)." Poverty and racism caused the people of Watts to riot against powerlessness. The Watts Riots erupted on August 11, 1965 when law enforcement arrested a black youth on drunk driving charges. Onlookers intervened and mobbed Watts for 6 days looting and destroying the city. The riot resulted in 34 people dead, 1,000 injured and more than 200 buildings

This paper will cover the events that took place within the first five days in south central Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict .

C. ,n.d.). The first one to break out was on the intersection of Florence boulevard and Normandie Avenue in South-Central LA Library, C. ,2016, March 3) . Riots lasted up until May 2 (Garner, K. ,2015, January), but it wasn’t easy to shut them down, the process began on May 1, when President George Bush ordered military troops and riot-trained federal officers to go to Los Angeles (Staff, H. ,2010). Once that was established The city ordered Dusk to Dawn curfews from April 30 through May 4. Library, C. ,2016, March 3) Eventually Marines, Army soldiers, and National Guard troops were sent to patrol the streets.Library, C. ,2016, March 3) It took days to stop the riots, 55 people were killed, 2,000 were injured, and 7,000 arrest were made. There was up to one billion dollars in property damage, (Staff, H. ,2010) that occurred primarily in the impoverished South-Central LA (Garner, K. ,2015,

In July 23, 1967, the Detroit Police department busted a bar with a prominent number of African Americans. They arrested every person in the bar. More and more people started to gather on 12th street to watch the proceedings. That is when the rioting started. The crowd began to get more violent as more people joined.

The riots were started by the people who now had distrust in the police, because even when caught on tape, they could get away with such brutality. Although many people believe the riots were caused simply by King verdict, but in reality, these extensive cruel actions were a justified protest to the social injustice and inequality in which people live. The media, however focused more upon the matter of prejudice and thus did not portray the riots as an anger from the African American people finding out that the four Los Angeles policemen were found not guilty and were only facing excessive force

The beginnings of the riots came on March 3, 1991, when Rodney King was stopped and brutally assaulted by police. King was stopped after a high speed chase police after police caught him intoxicated and was subsequently forced out of the car (History.com). From there, police began to unlawfully assault Rodney King, leaving him with a fractured skull, along with a broken cheekbone (History.com). A witness, George Holliday, filmed the officers beating Rodney King; a day after the tape was airing on CNN for the rest of the country to witness (Los Angeles Daily News). Four officers were later arrested and put to trial a year later, however all of them were not pleaded guilty. The verdict angered a massive amount of African

Race relations in Los Angeles had improved substantially since that time, according to many experts. And while the LAPD still faces criticism, it has also undergone substantail reforms and developed a more positive public image than it had then.